A Sword From Red Ice (95 page)

Soon, something promised within him.

Soon.

"Well, would you look here." Addie's
voice seemed to come from a great distance, and Raif had to force
himself from the dreamworld to understand it.

The cragsman had stopped. They had reached the lip
of the valley and a landscape of crags, rocky hills, and swaths of
evergreen forest lay before them.

But Addie Gunn wasn't looking ahead. He was
looking at a shrubby dried-up plant by his feet. "Trapper's tea,
I swear it." His voice was filled with quiet awe. He plucked off
a leaf, chewed on it, and then nodded with satisfaction. Squatting he
pinched the stem of the plant close to the base and plucked the
entire thing, roots and all, from the snow. "I'm a happy man,"
he said as if he meant it.

Raif murmured something. As Addie was chewing he
had been looking east. Far in the east a break in the stormheads
allowed sunlight to pour down onto a circle of heavily wooded hills.

Mish'al Nij.

A place of no cloud.

It had been a mistake to imagine the border
between Bludd and Sull would run straight south to west.

Addie tucked the shrub inside his game pouch, and
applied the last of the moving leeches to Raif's back. As he led the
way due east, the first bolt of lightning split the air.

Chosen by the Stone Gods

It was a Bludd sunset, firing the entire breadth
of the sky from north to south, the cloud banks glowing like rubies,
the sun shimmering like a bronze disk. Vaylo wasn't given much to
fancy, but he was sure he could feel the sun's brilliance on his
face. You couldn't call it warmth, as it was cold enough to freeze
the spit on your teeth if you smiled, yet he had the sensation that
he could feel individual waves of light bouncing off his skin.

Vaylo frowned at Hammie across the ramparts of the
hillfort, suspicious that this bout of poeticism might be his fault.
The Faa man had just said the sunset reminded him of Burning River.

That legend was sacred to Bludd; it struck
something close to its heart. Touched fear and pride, gave children
images to bring to their nightmares, and grown clansmen a sense of
what it meant to belong to Bludd. Ockish Bull had been the one who
first told him the tale in full. Vaylo must have been about nine;
Ockish about twenty-one. Ockish had led a two-day hunt into the
Bluddwilds north of the roundhouse and they'd bivouacked in a
chest-high snowdrift. Ockish was the eldest so he had them doing all
the grunt work. Vaylo remembered one of his half-brothers had come
along. Arno. It had been a good two days. There'd been the wonder of
digging a shelter from the snow, followed by the second wonder of it
not melting when they lit a fire. Deer had been caught, gods bless
their overstruck, overkilled souls—no one except Ockish had
exercised any restraint. Even Arno hadn't been too bad, and there'd
been a point when they'd mounted a water-bladder fight when he and
Arno had been working together as a team, laughing, soaking and
perfectly synchronizing the filling and the throwing of the missiles.
For that one fine hour it had been "us" against "them."

Both of his half-brothers were easier to get along
with when they weren't together, Vaylo had realized later.

That second night Ockish had ordered the
construction of a parley fire. No one but him knew what this meant,
yet seven boys all under the age of fifteen had moved sharp to his
orders, building a six-feet-wide hollow sphere of logs. "It's
for light, not warmth," he had told them once it was done. "That
way we'll be sure to see each other's faces when we talk."

Vaylo and Arno had agreed that it was a fine
thing. Ockish had lit the primed sphere with ceremonial flourish, and
then handed Vaylo a flask to pass around the circle. "One swig
per man." Whatever it was it had tasted like wood varnish and
made everything Vaylo looked at that night seem sharp in the middle
and blurred around the edges.

In his own good time, Ockish Bull had then told
them about the legend of Burning River. "It was the time of the
great Vor lord, Wardwir Crane, a thousand years deep in the past.
Wardwir was a fearsome general and rode to battle wearing the black
and winged cranehelm and wielding the sword named Beheader. His
enemies shivered to see it. He wanted land and fancied HalfBludd and
he took it on the Night of Wralls. It is told that Wardwir beheaded
one hundred and thirty-one Halfmen in battle before he ordered his
war scribes to cease the count. Wardwir judged that if a higher
number was recorded his enemies might disbelieve the tale. And cease
to fear him." A pause had followed where Ockish Bull's gaze had
traveled around the parley fire, waiting for everyone present to
register their agreement. Vaylo had nodded vigorously. A hundred and
thirty-one was a good number.

Satisfied, Ockish had continued. Even at that
young age he'd had a way with spinning tales, "The new Bludd
chief Mannangler Bludd had no choice but to ride his armies south to
meet Wardwir. When a Bluddsworn clan is invaded, he told his men, so
is Bludd. Wardwir assembled his host on a field south of the Wolf and
waited for Mannangler to make the crossing. Mannangler had been
camped south of Broddic and arrived with many rafts and boats. The
crossing was made in the dead of night. Five hundred Bluddsmen were
on the river when it ignited. Wardwir had been waiting for him and
had ordered naphtha floated on the water. When he gave the signal his
crossbowmen loosed a thousand arrows primed with bone phosphor. The
fire of hell erupted. Flames as tall as towers lit up the night as if
it were day. Bluddsmen burned on the river. When they threw
themselves in the water to douse the flames they still burned. Some
made it to the other side and cooked within their armor as they
fought. Mannangler himself boiled so intensely in his full plate he
exploded. The Bluddsmen who were still awaiting crossing heard the
terrible cries of the clansmen and many took to the water, knowing
they too would be burned but unable to stand by and watch their
brothers die. Hundreds of Bluddsmen lost their lives that night,
their weapons and armor melted to their skin, their bodies crisped to
husks."

Even now, forty-five years later, Vaylo could
remember the silence that had followed Ockish's tale. It had weight
and meaning. Many took to the water, those were the words Vaylo had
cherished the most. That was what it meant to be Bludd. Or so he had
thought back then.

Now he wondered about other things in the tale.
How could Wardwir have taken HalfBludd so easily? Both the Wolf and
the Lonewater guarded its clanhold, and the HalfBludd roundhouse was
not known for nothing as "the Siegebreaker." And what was
the Night of Wralls anyway? At first Vaylo had assumed Ockish meant
to say "Walls" but he had heard variations on the tale many
times since then and although several details changed from telling to
telling that word remained the same. Wralls.

Vaylo shivered. "Hammie," he said, "why
did you have to go and get me thinking about Burning River?"

Hammie knew when an apology was called for even
when he wasn't exactly sure about the nature of his trespass. "Sorry,
Chief." Vaylo wagged his head. "You should be. Keep watch."

"Aye." Hammie Faa stood to attention. He
was dressed in his new maroon cloak, and Vaylo could see that at some
point in the past few days it had been tailored to fit him more
precisely. Nan Culldayis had been busy with a needle. That woman had
a giant soft spot for anyone whose name ended in Faa.

Thinking about Nan made him want to see her, and
he took the short walk along the western rampart that led to the
stairs. The sunset was fading to purples and dried-blood reds and
black. Thicker, more serious clouds were heading in from the
northeast. Old compacted snow that had been around for several weeks
felt like stone underfoot. Part of the rampart wall had collapsed
decades earlier leaving an exposed gap where a man could simply walk
off into thin air. Vaylo considered why he had been here for nearly
thirty days and not given the order to have it timbered. Nan was busy
fixing things. Why wasn't he?

Waving a hand in farewell to Hammie, Vaylo took
the stairs. Someone had thought to throw salt here and the steps were
less treacherous than the rampart. The wind was beginning to pick up
and he could hear it warping the sheet copper on the roof.

The blond swordsman Big Borro was heading up as
Vaylo was heading down. "Snow?" Vaylo asked as Borro
backed against the stairwell to make room for his chief to pass.

Borro had an apple pinned between his teeth and it
made a sucking noise as he dislodged it. "Aye. Storm's brewing
to the east."

Over Bludd. The Dog Lord nodded. He noticed Borro
had a basic shortbow clipped to a brain hook on his shoulder belt
"Taking the watch from Hammie?"

"Joining him. Drybone says on the nights when
the clouds cover the moon we need to mount a double guard."

It was the first Vaylo had ever heard of such an
order. But he did not let Barro know it. "Don't stand still. You
might freeze."

"I know it," Big Borro said, nodding
toward the cloak, face mask, and overmitts he had rolled in a loose
pile and tucked under his left arm. "Got some spare for Hammie.
Some of . . . Der's old stuff."

Vaylo met Marcus Borro's dark blue eyes. Der was
Derek Blunt. And Derek Blunt was dead, attacked by only the gods knew
what. If the Dog Lord remembered rightly Big Borro and Derek had
married sisters. Pretty dark-haired girls who were waiting back at
the Bluddhouse. "Derek was a fine warrior. One of the best men I
ever saw wield a sword from the saddle."

Muscles in Borro's large fleshy face tightened. He
was a big man, wide as well as tall, with some hard fat at his gut
and the beginnings of a third chin. "Makes it harder to figure
how he could have been taken while mounted."

Few replies were possible to that and Vaylo did
not attempt any. The two parted in silence, exchanging blunt and
knowing nods.

Vaylo found himself little warmed when he entered
the hillfort. Fires were burning somewhere, but not here in the west
ward, in the hall above the temporary stables. There was a
fireplace—a vast black cavity the size of a beer cellar topped
with a stone mantle carved with thistles and fisher heads—but
the cook irons had gone, and an ominous split in the flue wall,
running from the mantel all the way to the roof, perhaps provided the
reason why. At least the cold had killed off some of the molds. The
green ones, if Vaylo wasn't mistaken. The black ones could probably
live on the moon.

Even without the warmth of the fire some men still
barracked here, and untidy rows of makeshift stretcher-beds, rush
mats, burlap sacking and weapons gear lined three of the five walls.
A few men were sleeping. Some were engaged in a tense game of
knucklebones. Little Aaron was sitting beside Mogo Salt, watching
with keen interest as Mogo rubbed yellow tung oil into Cawdo's
peel-bladed Morning Star hammerhead. Aaron looked up as his
grandfather passed, but the lure of such an exotic piece of weaponry
was too great and he bared his bottom teeth in a hopeful grimace that
meant something like, Sorry, Granda, don't be mad, but this is better
than spending time with you.

Vaylo glared at him. Keep the boy on his toes.

It had been sobering to see how quickly his
grandson had been won over by Gangaric. The boy's uncle had stayed at
the hillfort for only three days, but by the second day Aaron was
following Gangaric around like a puppy. "What's it like at
HalfBludd? Do they eat slugs? Is Quarro Bludd chief now? Which hammer
did Da wield at the Crab Gate? If we hold Withy why can't Granda be
king? Where are you going? Can I come?" The questions had been
relentless, and in fairness to Gangaric he had dealt with them with
patience and some tact. He'd had twin boys himself, Ferrin and Yago,
and he knew something about how to deal with bairns. He also knew,
Vaylo was sure, what an impression he was making upon the boy. Aaron
was seven, and easily swayed. Gangaric had wooed him with tales of
the Bluddhouse, of Pengo's brilliance on Ganmiddich Field, of the
importance of wielding a hammer, not a sword.

"Why don't you have a hammer, Granda?"
the boy had actually asked yesterday.

"Because I lost it in a Dhoonesman's chest,"
he had replied, surprised by how sharply the question touched him.
"And I never got it back." And it happened because your
father, the supposed hero of Ganmiddich, Pengo Bludd, deserted the
Dhoonehouse leaving behind a crew of forty men. Forty. And you, my
grandson, are one of the handful of people inside the house that
night who escaped alive. He had come so close to saying those words
that if Aaron had been older he could have read them on his granda's
face. As it was the boy had left him, his shoulders drooping, his
skinny arms hugging his skinny chest. Gangaric and his crew were well
gone now. They had ridden south to Withy eight days back, but damage
had been done. Little Aaron's head was filled with tales of his
father's and his uncles' bravery, and he had begun asking Nan when
they were going back. Even Nan wasn't sure where he meant by this. It
could be Dhoone, Ganmiddich or Bludd. Certainly in the past year
Aaron had seen more of Dhoone than any other clanhold. He'd been
barely six when they left Bludd, and could hardly be expected to
remember it.

Vaylo exited the west hall, plucked a rushlight
from a wall sconce, and took the stair up to the highest floor in the
hillfort. Nan had made herself a solar there, and it was the time of
night when she'd be done with her kitchen chores, and hopefully would
have left the cleanup to the men. With Nan you could never be sure.
She might stay and talk with the young ones. She had a way with them,
a calmness that settled them and made them want to do things for her.
Just this morning she'd had them stuffing mattresses with dried sedge
and straw. Vaylo had caught them all in the stables, laughing as
they'd stuffed one particular mattress with scratchy burrs. "For
Hammie," young Midge Pool had declared, beaming. "We're
taking bets on how long it'll take him to notice."